UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years94As different partners began to show serious interest, people working on the Partnershipknew that the real key to its success would be the involvement of then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Clearly, responding to the epidemic was a priority for him. In June1999, he had given the first ‘Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Lecture’ on ‘The GlobalChallenge of AIDS’. He spoke of the horrific impact of AIDS worldwide, then focusedon Africa where, he said, AIDS is “taking away Africa’s future”. He stressed the fact thatAIDS is everybody’s business. It was his first major public speech on AIDS and would befollowed by many more during his time as UN Secretary-General.Step by step, things were coming together. In September, a Memorandum of Understandingwas signed between UNAIDS and the Organization of African Unity, in Addis Ababa, tofoster collaboration and partnership in the fight against AIDS.But despite the strong focus on Africa, the main message of UNAIDS’ Epidemic Update,1999, was that there was no room for complacency about AIDS anywhere in the world.In 1999, approximately 26 million people were living with HIV and the number of annualdeaths from AIDS reached a new record: 1.4 million people 25 .The beginning of December (6-7) marked a major watershed in the establishment of theAfrica Partnership when Annan convened a private meeting of all constituents for IPAAcountries – governments, nongovernmental organizations, international organizations,donors and the private sector. It was the first time that all these players had been broughttogether in the same room to discuss AIDS, as well as the first major involvement of theSecretary-General. UNAIDS had engaged in high-level negotiations to ensure the meetingtook place at all. Louise Fréchette, then UN Deputy Secretary-General, was hugely instrumentalin preparing Annan’s involvement. She explained: “When the Secretary-General[makes] AIDS a personal priority, it does reverberate around the world – most peopledon’t have access to the Head of State, and it makes a huge difference”.Cleves had just moved from being a donor at DFID to work at UNAIDS, as Director of theExecutive Director’s office. She recalled that the stakes were very high for this meetingabout IPAA, because at this point the Secretariat had not yet developed the very goodworking relationship with the Secretary-General and the Deputy Secretary-General, whichwas initiated after the event. “We were nervous and worked very hard to get an acceptabletext to provide substance to the meeting. It was my first experience of the high adrenalinlevel of much of the Secretariat’s work – knife-edge timing, last minute deadlines, burningthe midnight oil”.25UNAIDS/WHO 2007 AIDS epidemic update, November 2007.